They all said their hellos and sat back to watch the show. Bo-T fought the bit, yanking and flinging his head back and forth.
“Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile,” Jack said.
Junior smiled. “Don’t you worry. I got him.”
Bo-T propped just then and tried taking off down the track. Junior turned him back around and trotted on up well up into the turn.
“He look like his daddy,” Miguel said.
“Oh, don’t say that,” Lucy said.
“The horse,” Miguel said, laughing. “Beau Born.”
“Oh good. Sorry. I thought you meant Rupert.”
They all chuckled.
Junior turned Bo-T around, allowed him to trot a little and then let him break into a canter. Still fighting the bit, trying to pull it out of Junior’s hands, Bo-T bowed his neck and settled into a nice stride when Junior clicked to him. Ben smiled.
Matthew was sketching as fast as he could. “Wish I could freeze-frame him.”
“Not with a beating heart,” Mim said.
Matthew smiled, still sketching feverishly. Everyone watched Junior gallop the horse down the backstretch and into the turn. Bo-T had picked up speed, but still had his neck bowed and was under wraps. Junior had a strong hold on him.
Ben glanced at Mim. She was smiling, moving slightly with each of Bo-T’s strides. “I feel like Penny Chenery,” she said. “Go Big Red.”
Everyone laughed.
Miguel stood up and waved his arm high in the air. “You about to see something you ain’t never seen before!”
Everyone laughed again.
“I think we’ve watched that movie one too many times,” Vicky said.
“Never,” Steven said.
They all watched Junior and Bo-T come back around; Bo-T was still galloping strong, all business now and floating along.
“He’s got an amazing stride,” Mim said. “Just like Beau Born.”
Ben nodded. “I would have loved to have seen them race against each other.”
“Who do you think would win?” Steven asked.
Ben paused. “Well, time-wise Bo-T with the track record would probably make it a horse race. But their personalities are so different. Beau Born was tenacious. He just flat loved winning. Bo-T; all he can think about is the girls.”
Junior pulled Bo-T up deep into the backstretch, almost into the turn, turned him around, loosened his rein and let him walk back.
“Sure was nice seeing Charlie,” Mim said.
Everyone agreed. They’d all known one another forever. Charlie had greeted them every morning for decades during racing season.
“Always a happy man,” Steven said.
“I wasn’t so sure how that marriage was going to work,” Jeanne said, “Charlie being a bachelor all is life. But he seems happy. We’re all going to have dinner tomorrow together.”
“Really,” Ben said. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” Vicky said. “George and Señor said it’s a surprise.”
Lucy looked over Matthew’s shoulder. “You’re very good,” she said.
“Thank you.” He glanced up at her and smiled.
“He looks alive,” Lucy added. “Mim, his heart is beating.”
“Let me see?”
Matthew passed the sketch book to her by way of Ben. Mim smiled, handing it back, and thumped her hand against her chest. “When you capture his right eye and left ear, it’ll be a masterpiece.”
Matthew blushed. “Thank you.”
They all watched Junior walk Bo-T down the rail past them. He turned the horse to the inside in front of the open gate, bowed to the infield, and everyone laughed. “You’re such a ham,” Lucy said.
Junior just grinned. Bo-T was nice and calm and just stood for a moment.
“I got it,” Matthew said. “I got it.”
Ben looked over his shoulder and nodded.
Junior turned Bo-T toward the fence.
“Hold up a second,” Ben said, climbing down and going over and holding Bo-T’s rein. “Finish the ear.”
Matthew sketched with a frenzy, looking up the horse, back at the sketch, erasing, sketching again.
“Does he want to run?” Steven asked.
When Ben looked at him, Steven motioned. “You’re supposed to look him in the eye and he’s going to tell you if he wants to run.”
Ben chuckled and played along. He’d seen the Secretariat movie his share of times too. He stood in front of the colt and looked into his eyes, looked long and hard. Then he smiled. “All right then,” he said. “Let’s show them what you’re made of.”
Everyone laughed. Even Bo-T seemed to enjoy the little performance. He nodded his head up and down, rubbed up against Ben, and then Ben stepped out of the way and sat back down.
“George is going to hose him off,” Junior said. “He should have B-Bo tacked. I’ll be right back.”
“All right. We’re not going anywhere.” Ben heaved a sigh and looked around. “It’s such a gorgeous day. It just doesn’t get much better than this.”
Everyone nodded, even the two from the younger generation.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life on this farm. It’s nice to be able to just sit here and do nothing but enjoy it for a change.”
“It’s called retirement,” Vicky said.
Ben looked at her. She’d come out of retirement to take on the care of the old-timers. It was a tremendous day-to-day responsibility, yet she really didn’t think of it as a job, she’d told him. She was just “living.”
Sitting there, Ben decided he was going to do a little living too. Afternoons like this and no horses racing that day, why not come home? Richard and Wendy were at the helm. Tom and Dawn and Junior could take care of things at the barn. Junior was helping out more and more. Dusty was there. Why not?
“You’re smiling, Ben,” Mim said.
“I know.” He pointed to the other side of the training track. “I walked way over there today. Do you hear a rooster in the morning?”
Miguel looked at Frank. “I tell you I hear rooster! You say I crazy!”
Everyone laughed.
“Yep,” Ben said. “There’s a rooster back there and a cow too.”
Jeanne placed her hand to her forehead shading her eyes to try and see.
“It crowed at me in broad daylight strutting all around. He made Bo-T look tame.”
They all laughed, especially when Ben imitated the rooster bobbing its head and scratching. Then here came Junior up the hill on B-Bo. Glenda was walking along behind. “I haven’t seen him gallop since he was a two-year old,” she said.
B-Bo walked onto the training track and stood tall and lazy. He just gazed around the track a moment, then looked at everyone and yawned a great big yawn, showing all his teeth and rolling his eyes.
Ben studied his hind leg. It was done up in Vetwrap and only slightly swollen. Glenda sat down next to Lucy. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” Lucy said. “I’m not nauseated anymore, but I’m awfully sleepy all the time.”
“That’s because your body is working twenty-four hours a day seven days a week wide awake or sound asleep. You need lots of sleep.”
Lucy smiled. “I’m getting it. Vicky is always making me go take a nap.”
Junior walked B-Bo down to the turn and let him stand and look around some more. Ben watched him walk then trot when he started toward them and nodded to Junior to let him canter. Mim was nodding as well.
“He’s like a semi. It takes him a while to get going and then….”
B-Bo gave a little buck and they were all surprised including Junior. “You showing off, Big Man? You showing off?” B-Bo tossed his head and took to cantering along and went around three times like it was nothing.
The entourage followed him back down the hill singing, “Oh happy day, oh happy day…when Jesus washed, oh when he washed, when Jesus washed…he washed my sins away! Oh happy day...”
George looked out of the barn, laughed, and sang along i
n a deep baritone voice, “He taught me how to watch…fight and pray, fight and pray. And he’ll rejoice in things we say, every day. Oh happy day….Oh happy day….”
They were all still singing as they went their separate ways, arms waving and their voices fading in the distance. It was a happy day indeed. Ben decided he might as well take a nap before dinner and stretched out on the porch couch.
“Matthew!” he said. “Can you bring me a pillow?”
“You want a blanky too!”
“Now that you mentioned it, it is cooling off a little.”
Matthew brought him a pillow and an afghan. “You’re really taking this retirement business seriously, aren’t you?”
Ben laughed, fluffed the pillow and covered up.
~ * ~
Slumgullion was one of Dawn’s two signature dishes she’d perfected over the years and always a big hit. Made with browned ground beef, tomato sauce with onion, garlic, and macaroni noodles, topped with grated Parmesan cheese, not only did the adults in the family love it; the children loved it too. It went really good with a tossed salad, Roquefort dressing, and Italian bread.
Three huge serving bowls were placed on the table, close to everyone. Mark and Susie sat across from the children and were thoroughly entertained with their cute little antics. Maeve made a kind of Slumgullion sandwich which was quite a mess and sat eating one bite after another. D.R. took a big drink of milk after shoveling in each mouthful and had a pretty impressive white mustache going.
“Pass the butter, please,” Dusty said.
Mark handed the butter dish to him and got the bowl of salad in return. He helped himself and passed it along. Gloria and Charlie were at her grand-niece’s ordination ceremony. Richard had gone to a benefit dinner of one of their vendors.
“How does that work?” Mark asked. “The tellers? The food vendors? The janitors? The parking attendants.”
“They’re all union,” Tom said. “We have very little to do with them from our standpoint. That’s basically Richard’s department. They’re all under contract.”
Wendy nodded. “Occasionally I have to be the go-between, but for the most part, everything on that end is union. They manage themselves.”
“I hope it stays that way,” Ben said.
“Why wouldn’t it?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying. Never mind. It’s been too nice of a day.” He shared his ‘went for a walk, met the neighbor lady, saw a cow and a rooster’ story, and the children’s eyes got big.
“A real rooster? A cock-a-doodle-do rooster?” D.R. asked.
Ben nodded. “And a moooo cow too.”
Maeve giggled.
Dawn, Tom, and Randy refrained from asking him if he was sure he should be walking that far from home, though that’s exactly what all three were thinking. “How nice,” Dawn said instead.
Matthew picked up on their vibes and changed the subject. “I drew Bo-T’s beating heart today. You can’t actually see it, but Mim says it’s there, and I think so too. Something happened and….” He held up both hands. “All of a sudden, it was there.”
Wendy looked at him and paused. “I owe you a thousand apologies.”
“Well, if it’s all right with you,” Matthew said, fearing she was about to have another crying jag from the way she was looking at him, “can we just eat.”
Wendy smiled. “I love you, Son.”
Matthew just looked at her, tried making a joke of her comment, tried lightening the mood. “I love you too, Mommy Dearest.”
“I love Mommy,” Maeve said, Slumgullion all over her face. Everyone laughed.
“I should have let you go to art school.” Wendy was determined to get this off her chest, determined not to cry. “I should have. I’m sorry. I advised you wrong.”
The table fell quiet.
“Actually, Mom, I don’t think I would ever have been able to draw a beating heart in art school. I would never have even wanted to. It would never have crossed my mind. I’m where I should be, this moment: right now.” He looked around the table. “And if someone would pass me some more Slumgullian, I’d be even happier.”
Everyone chuckled.
“Well now that I’ve gotten that off my chest,” Wendy said, smiling. “I’ll have some more too, please.”
Susie looked around the table. “This is the most amazing family. I am in awe.”
Tom laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait till we have a fight. We get down and dirty!”
Everyone laughed. “No, we don’t,” Dawn said. “Just Tom.”
Tom threw a piece of bread at her and laughed. “Don’t you start with me!”
Randy caught the bread mid-air and buttered it. “Thank you!”
Ben looked at Liz. “What’s this I hear about a surprise dinner with the old-timers?”
Liz smiled. “It’s a surprise, Ben. Don’t you like surprises?”
“Noooo.” Just about everyone answered for him and laughed.
Ben looked at all of them. “That was the old Ben. The new Ben likes surprises. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’ll be surprised too.”
Señor looked at him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning to pull it off, so stay away. Otherwise it’ll ruin the surprise.”
Ben nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
There was a knock on the door and everyone turned. A man as tall as a tree stood in the doorway. “I heard Nottingham Down is getting slots and I had to come see for myself.”
“Cracker Jack!” Ben said. “Come on in! Sit down! Mark, Susie, this is Cracker Jack Henderson.”
Cracker Jack shook Mark’s hand and smiled at Susie. “Nice to meet you, Darlin’!” He sat down as if he had just been there yesterday and not away for over a year. “Ooh, Slumgullion! This is worth eight hundred miles for sure!”
Susie stared at Cracker Jack’s wild and crazy hair. It was snow white and thick, shoulder length, and looked as if each strand had a mind of its own. “Where do I know you from?” she asked, thinking.
“Well….”
“I know! You came to my high school and gave a talk on broadcasting. Gosh, how long ago was that?”
Cracker Jack smiled. “Was it just last year?”
Susie laughed. “Oh my gosh! We all talked about you for days.”
Cracker Jack poured himself a glass of iced tea from a pitcher. “Oh, and what did you all say?”
“We said how inspiring it was that you said life had its ups and downs, but it’s the middles that keep you going. You had a little teeter-totter that you sat on the podium.”
Cracker Jack glanced at Ben and smiled. “I still have that little teeter-totter. Zig Ziegler’s got his pump; I have my see-saw.”
“But the funny thing is,” Susie said. “We could never quite agree about what you meant.”
“That’s the point,” Cracker Jack said. “See, it’s like this….”
“Oh geez,” Ben said. “Is it time for dessert yet?”
Everyone laughed.
“I’ll be here all week,” Cracker Jack said. “I’ll explain fully.”
~ * ~
There was so much to talk about. Slots, the wedding, the banquet, updates on the ReHab and ReHome project, Ben’s eye surgery, Matthew’s accident, his current eye challenges, the Appalachian trip, Ben’s semi-retirement, the old-timers, T-Bone’s Place, claiming races.
Carol put the children to bed and the adults all sat around the dinner table talking well into the evening. “Good luck on the claiming races,” Cracker Jack said. “That’s not going to be easy.”
“Perhaps we can borrow your little teeter-totter,” Tom said.
Everyone laughed and then grew serious.
“They have a rule in California about a claimed horse that breaks down in the race. The problem I have with that,” Randy said, “is the horse has to be put down on the track. It doesn’t cover the horse that somehow makes it back to the barn. Horsemen can gripe and carry on all they want,
but until there’s a way to stop trainers from trying to unload a horse through a claim, it’s going to continue to go on.”
Cracker Jack nodded. “Probably at least sixty percent of the races run in this country are claiming races.”
Mark took out his Smartphone, typed in a question, and got a quick answer. “Sixty one percent and growing due to slots.” He paused, reading further down the page. “With the influx of higher purse monies, trainers are playing the odds as never before and putting their horses’ lives on the line.”
“I hate that,” Dawn said.
They all nodded.
“The reality is on any given day a horse can go into a race perfectly sound and break down for any number of reasons. No one should profit from that, particularly the lowlifes who lead a sore horse over knowing he’s likely to break down and hoping he gets claimed,” Tom said.
Dusty nodded. “And if he does break down in the race, regardless of the situation, I believe that claim should be null and void. It’s as simple as that. No one should have to underwrite the unscrupulous behavior of a few undesirables. That’s fraud. That’s criminal. You’re endangering the horse and the jockey, and the horses and jockeys all around them. It’s all for money. If an owner or trainer doesn’t know what to do with the horse at the end of its racing career, that’s what we’re here for, that’s what ReHab and ReHome is for. If that horse hasn’t made him any money up until that point, shame on them. And if it has, shame on them even more. Neither situation justifies trying to get the horse claimed or cash a bet with a horse’s one last hurrah. Each owner and every trainer has to be held accountable.”
Everyone sat quietly for a moment. “This is never going to happen without the veterinarians getting involved,” Randy said, “Totally. Any horse shipping in here to run as a claimer has to be examined. Any horse dropping down in price has to be examined. That would be a start.”
Ben nodded. “The bottom line, if a horse gets claimed and it breaks down, regardless of any situation leading up to it, that claim should be cancelled. Are we in agreement of that?”
There was a unanimous show of hands.
“All right then.”
Cracker Jack looked at his old friend and smiled proudly. “I know you, Ben. I know where you stood on slots. I know you didn’t want them, no matter what. But I think by bringing them in you can make an even bigger difference in horse racing. If you can get a change in claiming rules to fly, you just might make a change none of you ever thought possible. Everything happens for a reason. I’m just hoping I’m alive to see it. I hope we all are, because it’s not going to be easy.”
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